Forced carb or condition keg?

[StillHouse]

Hey all, I'm about to keg for the first time. I don't want to keg the whole batch, I need some bottled for a homebrew competition. I've found the best way to evenly carbonate is to add priming sugar to the whole batch and not each individual bottle. So my question is, should I add priming sugar to the whole batch, bottle what I need, keg the rest. Or keg the whole batch, force carbonate, then bottle what I need?

A separate question, in general, is conditioned beer better than forced carbed? I see all these big micro brewery's having cask conditioned beer parties... (Bells brewery has been having cask conditioned hopslam events)


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[tektonjp]

Your first idea. Prime it all first. I find (subjectively) primed carbonation has finer bubbles. Maybe that's in my head, but there it is.

 

[CA_Mouse]

You can also bottle off of your keg too. Depending on your keg setup, it is probably easier and can result in clearer beer.

 

[Hello]

Well, just like I said to another guy. I use beersmith to figure my priming sugar for kegging. It is about 1/2 of what it would be if I bottled. I've done it once, it worked beautifully. If I were bottling half I would rack half to a bucket and half to keg unless I wanted to bottle from the keg. But since I don't have a reason why 1/2 the priming sugar works for a keg, you can always try to add priming sugar as you would if you were bottling and if you have foam issues then you'll know for next time what to do.

 

[tektonjp]

Well, just like I said to another guy. I use beersmith to figure my priming sugar for kegging. It is about 1/2 of what it would be if I bottled. I've done it once, it worked beautifully. If I were bottling half I would rack half to a bucket and half to keg unless I wanted to bottle from the keg. But since I don't have a reason why 1/2 the priming sugar works for a keg, you can always try to add priming sugar as you would if you were bottling and if you have foam issues then you'll know for next time what to do.

Looks like we're doing a tag team thing here! I've heard that the reasoning behind halving the kegging amount was due to headspace, that is, leass headspace in a keg compared to bottles. If you think of extremes, perhaps this might be so: an underfilled bottle has less CO2 volume in liquid than one which has "normal" headspace, even though each started with the same amount of priming sugar per ml. But I don't see that the headspace in a keg is half the amount one would have in bottles. But maybe that is so. Tough for me to measure. I'll try a keg with half next time and see how it goes.